


Escaping the Past

by Reeseykins



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Self-indulgent backstory at that, Vallaslin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 02:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3156842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reeseykins/pseuds/Reeseykins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following her break-up with Solas, Lavellan shares some drinks with friends and gets to talking about why she couldn't refuse Solas' offer to remove her vallaslin.</p>
<p>This is really self-indulgent backstory for my Inquisitor Lavellan.  There is some non-con referenced but just in passing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escaping the Past

Taresia Lavellan contemplated the bottom of her third mug of ale with a baleful eye, nearly oblivious to the friends clustered loosely around her.  It had been three days since Solas had abruptly ended things between them at the waterfall in Crestwood. Three days, and two nights – she didn’t realize it until now, but for the past few months, she had started to measure her time in nights.

The first night she hadn’t slept at all. She wandered home alone, her heart feeling like an empty cavern collapsing in on itself, overcome with her thoughts: Solas’ lips on hers, his confession about the _vallaslin_ , and his sudden departure, all played out again and again in her waking mind. 

The second night, she collapsed on her bed in a heap and fell asleep almost instantly, but rest eluded her. Her dreams were empty. She cried out for him, then – at first, whining like a small, lost child, but then screaming like a rampaging drunkard, demanding that he stop ignoring her. The next morning, she was ashamed. She had a good cry into her morning cup of tea, scrubbed her face with cold water and a rough cloth, and went off to find Cullen for his morning report.

Only Josephine commented on the absence of her tattoos right away. She thought perhaps that they were trying to be polite; either that, or they hadn’t yet had a good look at her face. She was avoiding everything except her most serious duties as Inquisitor, and hadn’t exactly gone searching for the company of her inner circle. 

Cassandra had watched in concern as the Inquisitor mechanically went about her duties in Skyhold earlier that day.  It had taken her approximately five minutes to figure out what had happened – she knew about Lavellan’s feelings for Solas (although she was quite sure she was the only one to whom Lavellan had entrusted that knowledge), and felt she knew the Inquisitor well enough by now to judge that she was broken-hearted.  Plus, she had seen them leave together two nights before, but then saw Solas return hours before Lavellan.  She had stopped him, of course, and interrogated him as to Lavellan’s whereabouts, but his miserable countenance quickly told her all she needed to know. She didn’t know the details, but she knew she didn’t like it. Not one bit.

To try to take the edge off, she had rounded up most of Lavellan’s closest companions and arranged for some private space on the second floor of the tavern for them.  The staff brought pitchers of ale and mugs and laid out some fresh bread and hard cheese. Varric started regaling them with an unsolicited story about Hawke and an encounter with an exceptionally large rat in Kirkwall’s Darktown.  The Iron Bull was refilling his and Dorian’s mugs of ale, when Sera finally showed up and plopped down in a seat across from the Inquisitor.  Lavellan didn’t even look up at her, as she swished the remnants of her drink around in a small circle at the bottom of her mug.

“Wait a fucking minute. I figured it out! Why you look different, yeah?” Sera slammed her hand down on the table with a wide grin. “The tree is gone! Your face tree thing! It’s gone, it’s just your face now!”

The group went silent and still. Varric let out a breath he’d been holding.  “Real smooth, Buttercup.”

“Let me get you a refill on that drink, Boss,” The Iron Bull swiped her mug from her hand effortlessly. Lavellan looked slightly bewildered by its absence from her hand – she was a tiny elf, after all, and after three big mugs of ale the room was starting to fill spinny – but then she looked up at Sera, and smiled thinly.

“Solas did a spell and took them off for me. He said they were slave marks.”

Cassandra couldn’t hide her shock, and let out a strangled noise that made Varric chuckle quietly. Dorian looked contemplative. Now that Lavellan had finally opened the topic for discussion, he had questions he wanted answers to – for scholarly reasons, of course.

“That must have been quite the spell. And slave markings? I don’t think I realized the magisters tattooed their slaves…although they have a decidedly elven flare to them, don’t you think?” As Dorian verbally meandered his way through his thoughts, the others studied Lavellan. Her gaze had gone distant, like she was somewhere else completely.  Dorian quieted, and a hush fell over the room.

“I was born a slave, you know.”

The sudden revelation rolled over them all like a shockwave.  Bull drained his full mug in one long gulp, and Cassandra couldn’t help herself from letting out a strangled noise of surprise.

Lavellan met their surprised stares, set down her mug, and began to explain.

***

_My mother was Dalish, her father was the Keeper of the Lavellan clan. She told me they quarreled often in her adolescence and that she had taken every opportunity to flaunt his strict rules. When she was eighteen, she fell in love with a hunter from another clan.  According to my mother, my father was tall for an elf, handsome, and good with a bow – but he was also pompous and hot-headed, and grandfather disapproved of the match.  In defiance, my parents left both of their clans and ran off together.  They were together for two months, eking out a miserable life on the road, when they were set upon by a large band of slavers.  My mother told me she had already discovered she was pregnant at that time, and that she had decided to go back to the clan and beg her father’s forgiveness, but she just hadn’t gotten up the nerve to actually do it yet. My father tried to take the slavers down—the Tevinters gutted him, and he bled out in front of my mother’s eyes. They carted her off with a handful of other elves they had collected throughout the borderlands and brought her to the slave markets in Minrathous to be sold._

_She was purchased by a middle-aged magister named Larnius, as a handmaiden for his wife Delia. Their estate was far from the capital, on the border with Nevarra, not far from where the slavers had first picked her up.  Larnius and Delia weren’t cruel or unreasonable people (although they were masters, all the same) and they permitted my mother to keep me, rather than selling me off._

_When I was a baby, my mother would carry me with her during the day in a sling, singing quietly to me as she worked.  I remember a vision of her face, and her long white-gold hair done up in a tight bun – she was a ray of sunshine. The mistress was, apparently, quite fond of me as well, and would sometimes rock me while my mother buttoned her into her dress, or arranged her hair with delicate jewels._

_I started “helping” around the estate as soon as I could walk and follow instructions.  I was the only child there, and everyone doted on me as I went about my day, ferrying food and laundry and notes amongst the other slaves. The head cook, an aging elven woman, would let me sneak an extra biscuit whenever it suited me, and I sometimes sit and sing for her, to brighten up her kitchen in exchange. Even Larnius’ human guardsmen knew me and liked me; they treated me like their little mascot, and would often spar with each other for my entertainment when no one was around._

_Most nights, after all the other slaves were asleep, my mother would wake me to tell me tales of her childhood with the Dalish.  She told me everything she knew of the elven gods, the Creators: Elgar’nan the All-Father, and Mythal the protector, to whom she often prayed. She warned me of the Dread Wolf, too, and sometimes made a little offering to him since, she said, he was the only god who could actually respond to her prayers. The stories of the gods, and of her clan—it all seemed very remote to me then._

_When I was fifteen, Larnius and Delia were called to some sort of gathering of magisters in Minrathous, and Delia demanded that mother and I come along to attend her.  My excitement was uncontainable. I had heard a thousand tales of Minrathous over my short life, and I was fascinated by magisters and what I perceived to be the romantic intrigue of living life as one of the Imperium’s elite.  I laid awake in the nights leading up to our departure, imagining myself as a powerful magister, with a legion of apprentices at my beck and call (not to mention a line of handsome lovers)._

_I was in a near frenzy of excitement by the time we arrived. Despite being somewhat lost in my own wild fantasies, it became apparent to me almost immediately that there was no romance to life as a slave in Minrathous, least especially in the household of my own master’s brother, an influential magister named Danarius._

_Danarius’ slaves were instructive, but cold and distant to me and the rest of the slaves that had come along from Larnius’ estate. Whereas Larnius’ slaves were friendly, sometimes even jovial, Danarius’ were always looking at the floor, avoiding eye contact, avoiding conversation. No one seemed to want to stand out or draw attention to themselves.  Eventually, however, one of the head house slaves and my mother struck up a rapport – my mother said the woman had inquired about her vallaslin – and thereafter things became more comfortable for us._

_The woman introduced me to her children: a daughter who was a few years older than I, and a son that was about my age.  The daughter, Varania, became my fast friend.  Leto, her brother, had little interest in me, although since he seldom left his sister’s side we got on well enough.  The three of us stayed up late every night together in the herb garden (where slaves were permitted to take fresh air) – Varania and I chattering and gossiping, while Leto made a poor attempt at “training exercises” which were really more like calisthenics than anything.  They were kind to me, and their friendship kept my spirits bright as I adjusted to life in Minrathous._

_One night, only a few days before we were scheduled to depart, I awoke to sudden chaos.  It took me a few minutes to rub the sleep from my eyes and process what was happening – Varania’s mother was in the room my mother and I shared, whispering but obviously agitated. She was describing something to my mother in gasping sobs, wringing her hands in her dress and weeping. My mother was pale, and I could see the reflection in her wide eyes from my cot across the floor.  Finally, my mother took the woman’s hand and turned out the door.  I hadn’t been told to stay put, so I followed them._

_We snuck out of the slaves’ quarters and crept up the service stairs to the top level. I’d walked this path before—Delia’s room was on this floor, along with the room belonging to master of the house.  As we made our way towards Danarius’ quarters, I started to hear noises, although I couldn’t identify them at first.  Varania was already there, crouched around the corner from the entrance to her master’s rooms. An armed guard kept watch, so we were careful to stay out of sight.  I could hear more clearly now what was happening inside the room. It sounded like lovemaking, but…not. Grunting, groaning, gasping. Unlovely. And then a moan. Leto.  Varania’s mother wailed, and the guards came rushing over to find us._

_It was strange, though. They seemed unconcerned that we were there. They simply laughed. Varania’s mother shuddered with tears in a heap on the floor, with the three of us standing around her in shades of despair and bewilderment. They laughed._

_Being in Minrathous had opened my eyes, but I could tell it had deeply affected my mother. There was a hardness to her after that night. She didn’t say much about it, but I remember she told me she felt like she was living in the real world again, for the first time in a long time. I didn’t know what she meant, but when we returned home to Larnius’ estate she began working on a plan for me to escape._

_She sent a message to her father through the couriers that sometimes passed communications amongst the slaves of the Imperium. Once she had confirmation he received it, she enlisted the help of the cook to prepare a horrible tasting tonic for me which, when consumed, made me look and feel like I was on the edge of death.  As I lay sick in bed, barely lucid, she paraded people by my bedside, spreading the lie that I had caught something while we were away in Minrathous.  Even Delia came to see me on my supposed deathbed. I think she was crying, actually._

_Overnight, Mother prepared a pack for me with rations and a spare blanket. She also packed a map she had drawn that marked the area where I was to meet my grandfather, about 15 miles from the estate. I was feeling better, the effects of the tonic having worn out hours ago, although we didn’t let anyone else know that, of course. I don’t think I even really realized my mother wasn’t coming with me, at that point. I helped her place a straw dummy in my bed, tied up in sheets – she explained she would make a show in the morning of having my “body” removed and burned by two friends who were in on the plan, thereby forever covering my tracks.  Larnius wouldn’t search for a dead slave, after all, not to mention one his own wife had witnessed dying only a day before._

_It was early morning when Mother walked me down to the estate’s undercroft. The entire way she was instructing me on how to navigate the sewer, going over landmarks with me that she had already described twice and marked on the map. I finally, fully realized that she was staying behind. I am not proud of how I reacted in that moment – I nearly ran back up the stairs into the estate and announced my good-health to everyone – but finally she convinced me to go.  I never thought to ask her how she knew how to escape, although I can only assume now looking back that she was much more resourceful than I ever gave her credit for, and that there were many things about her I knew little of._

_I escaped with ease, although I was in a haze as I walked. I had no trouble finding the path my mother had set out for me, but thoughts of her at every step made me feel as if I was walking_ towards _slavery, not away from it. The next evening, I met my grandfather for the first time._

_I spent the next 15 years with his clan – my clan – clan Lavellan. Until I was sent to the Conclave. Over time, the clan became my home.  I received my vallaslin when I was 17; the same pattern as my mother’s, the beautiful tree of Mythal._

***

Lavellan stopped and took a deep gulp of her ale. She didn’t realize how draining it would be to recount the tale of her life to them like this. Of course, she had omitted some of the more intimate details, but still – she had never told anyone before now, not even Solas.

The group of them looked horrified. Sera’s face was screwed up in anger, but her runny nose suggested that she had shed a few tears as Lavellan spoke.  Dorian rested his forehead in his palm, looking sick.  Cassandra reached her hand forward and laid it over Lavellan’s warmly.

“So, why did you remove the _vallaslin_ , then? If they were a reminder of your mother…” Cassandra asked gently, breaking the silence that had fallen over them all.

“If my mother had known what they were – that the _vallaslin_ were…are slave markings…” she trailed off, the lump rising in her throat cutting off her speech.

“She wouldn’t have wanted them,” The Iron Bull finished for her.

“She wouldn’t have. For herself, or for me.” She paused, then smiled and looked around at her friends. “Since I escaped, I have tried to live a life that honors her. Being here, the Inquisition – that honors her. And removing my _vallaslin_ honors her too.”

***

Across Skyhold, Solas paced restlessly in the rotunda.  He felt, more than heard, Cole’s arrival, although he barely acknowledged him. He was being selfish, he knew, but he was allowing himself some time to feel miserable.

“Did you know?” Cole demanded. “The Inquisitor. She was a slave.” He was melancholy.

Solas was silent a long time as he paced. “Of course I knew. It was why I told her.”


End file.
